When the push throughout the Western world to legalize and normalize euthanasia gained popularity, disability rights advocates predicted that this is what would follow. The argument was that adults should be able to decide to have their doctors kill them. After all, we shouldn't make decisions for adults, right? Yeah, no. This uncritical attitude was helped along by Western ableism that judges the lives of people with disabilities as less valuable than the those of non-disabled people.

Now, as we expected, the argument is being made that we should also let doctors kill disabled children who ask for it. After all, they say, why shouldn't children be given the same rights as adults? They're "terminally ill", so they're going to die anyway; we'd just be speeding up the process to save them from unwanted pain. Right? I have no doubt that this measure will be legalized in Belgium. The question now is, what group will follow this one? If you think it's going to stop with physicians being allowed to kill disabled kids, then you're just willfully (and probably blissfully) ignorant and choking on your body privilege. Ableism kills. Of course, it kills us FIRST, but you will follow and eventually, you and those like you will be just as dead. When that time comes, should society consider that a mercy killing too?

About Me

Above all else, I am proof that having an incurable cancer doesn't mean that your life is over. I am also the mother of a gifted child who has been an artist since she was born. We live in the southern part of the beautiful state of Louisiana. I'm a biology student on hiatus as I heal from treatment. Besides English, I can speak Arabic, a bit of French and Spanish and nothing more than a few phrases in German but I'm working on it. I love cats and plants even though I only have 2 of each. Some of my friends call me Tulip. You're free to do the same.